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China has revealed plans to introduce tough regulations intended to stamp out ‘false’ earthquake warnings, in order to prevent panic and mass evacuations of cities triggered by forecasts of major tremors.

The new regulations on earthquake information, approved last week by the Chinese prime minister Zhu Rong-ji, will require a “high standard of scientific reasoning” behind all earthquake predictions. Anyone who releases an inaccurate earthquake warning may be penalized.

According to the government, more than 30 unofficial earthquake warnings have been made in the past three years, none of which has been accurate. Such warnings, which could cause evacuation of more than 10,000 residents at a time, have repeatedly brought production lines and business operations to a standstill, leading not only to public disorder but also to considerable damage to the country's economy.

Earthquake prediction was introduced as a national priority in China during the Cultural Revolution, and warnings against the feasibility of such predictions — whether accurate or not — were once seen as a challenge to Mao's revolutionary movement.